Where to begin? Maybe with an invective with which, in 1931, Walter Benjamin tried, among other t... more Where to begin? Maybe with an invective with which, in 1931, Walter Benjamin tried, among other things, to denigrate the achievements of the art education movement. With sharp phrasing, he vented how fed up he was with the societal relevance of popular art history. He thought that particularly the term "Verlebendigung" (enlivening/animation) bore the signature of modern art writing and that this swamp of popular science harboured "the hydra of school aesthetics" with its seven heads, "creatorship, empathy, removal from time, reproduction, witnessing, illusion, and enjoyment of art" (Benjamin 1990, 285; Tietze 1980). The invective aimed at both the theoreticians of an aesthetics of empathy and the pedagogical practitioners who had thirty years earlier, at the "First German Art Education Day", laid the foundations for a reform of the curricula through visual means. At this conference, held on 28 and 29 September 1901 in Dresden, pedagogues, artists, art historians, and politicians joined forces to-as Otto Beutler put it-"make art, and in particular our German national art, accessible and understandable to our people's youth and to those milieus that live detached from cultural centers" (Beutler 1902, 14). At this time, the principles of instructional treatment of works of fine art in schools deeply changed (Warnecke 1902, III), 1 away from looking at images as auxiliary tools toward conveying the formal and substantive qualities of works of art. The starting point of this development was the wide dissemination of all kinds of art-historical printed matter. The availability of reasonably priced book series and portfolios of reproductions grew rapidly (Kitschen 2021). What emerged was a market for cheap images. Publishing houses expressed the goal to bring the uneducated into closer contact with "high art". Persuading the masses to "painterly vision" or empathy was seen as one of the most important aspects of popular education. This applied to German households as well as to schools (Muther 1900, 273). 2 Those who hoped to profit from this development sold art reproductions as the new medium of aesthetic edification. One example was the publisher Artur Seemann. In 1903, in an article for the Allgemeine Deutsche Lehrerzeitung titled "Bildende Kunst in der Empathy and Enjoyment On the Use of Reproductions in School Practice after 1900
Als "maßlose" Kopie ist die zwischen 1774 und 1784 errichtete, gigantische "Ruine&... more Als "maßlose" Kopie ist die zwischen 1774 und 1784 errichtete, gigantische "Ruine" einer dorischen Säule im französischen Landschaftsgarten Désert de Retz eine Ausnahmeerscheinung im Kontext der Kunst-und Gartendis-kurse ihrer Entstehungszeit. Komplettiert hätte der Säulestumpf, in dem sich ein mehrgeschossiges Gartenhaus befi ndet, eine Höhe von einhun-dertzwanzig Metern. Doch gerade aus der Inszenierung einer übergroßen klassischen Ordnung als bewohnte Ruine erschließt sich die Bedeutung dieses ungewöhnlichen Bauwerks. Die Garten des Désert de Retz zog nicht allein die Surrealisten um André Breton in ihren Bann, die sich 1960 vor seinem Eingang zu einem Grup-penfoto versammelten. Eine eigentümliche Querverbindung besteht auch zu einem der bekanntesten Entwürfe von Adolf Loos, der 1922 für den Chicago-Tribune-Tower-Wettbewerb einen Wolkenkratzer in Gestalt einer riesigen dorischen Säule einreichte. Wir danken herzlich dem Landschaftsfotografen Michael Kenna, der...
The elevator is today considered a safe and modern means of transportation which even a child can... more The elevator is today considered a safe and modern means of transportation which even a child can operate and which everyone uses as a matter of course. However, the enthusiasm for the vertical movement, for the "earth-bound ascension" still influences the creative works of architects, writers, artists and film-makers. In the 1920s, the literati spoke of the "roaring lift of time" and thus captured in words a new "American" way of life. The fascination with the vertical movement inspired directors to make films which were able to capture the modern view of space in pictures which until then had not been seen. Building planners used the elevator not only to literally build high-rises in the sky, but also, with the use of transparent lifts or panorama elevators, to make it possible to experience architecture in unusual ways. This book attempts to introduce a largely forgotten chapter in the history of technology. It sets out to illustrate the successful h...
Where to begin? Maybe with an invective with which, in 1931, Walter Benjamin tried, among other t... more Where to begin? Maybe with an invective with which, in 1931, Walter Benjamin tried, among other things, to denigrate the achievements of the art education movement. With sharp phrasing, he vented how fed up he was with the societal relevance of popular art history. He thought that particularly the term "Verlebendigung" (enlivening/animation) bore the signature of modern art writing and that this swamp of popular science harboured "the hydra of school aesthetics" with its seven heads, "creatorship, empathy, removal from time, reproduction, witnessing, illusion, and enjoyment of art" (Benjamin 1990, 285; Tietze 1980). The invective aimed at both the theoreticians of an aesthetics of empathy and the pedagogical practitioners who had thirty years earlier, at the "First German Art Education Day", laid the foundations for a reform of the curricula through visual means. At this conference, held on 28 and 29 September 1901 in Dresden, pedagogues, artists, art historians, and politicians joined forces to-as Otto Beutler put it-"make art, and in particular our German national art, accessible and understandable to our people's youth and to those milieus that live detached from cultural centers" (Beutler 1902, 14). At this time, the principles of instructional treatment of works of fine art in schools deeply changed (Warnecke 1902, III), 1 away from looking at images as auxiliary tools toward conveying the formal and substantive qualities of works of art. The starting point of this development was the wide dissemination of all kinds of art-historical printed matter. The availability of reasonably priced book series and portfolios of reproductions grew rapidly (Kitschen 2021). What emerged was a market for cheap images. Publishing houses expressed the goal to bring the uneducated into closer contact with "high art". Persuading the masses to "painterly vision" or empathy was seen as one of the most important aspects of popular education. This applied to German households as well as to schools (Muther 1900, 273). 2 Those who hoped to profit from this development sold art reproductions as the new medium of aesthetic edification. One example was the publisher Artur Seemann. In 1903, in an article for the Allgemeine Deutsche Lehrerzeitung titled "Bildende Kunst in der Empathy and Enjoyment On the Use of Reproductions in School Practice after 1900
Als "maßlose" Kopie ist die zwischen 1774 und 1784 errichtete, gigantische "Ruine&... more Als "maßlose" Kopie ist die zwischen 1774 und 1784 errichtete, gigantische "Ruine" einer dorischen Säule im französischen Landschaftsgarten Désert de Retz eine Ausnahmeerscheinung im Kontext der Kunst-und Gartendis-kurse ihrer Entstehungszeit. Komplettiert hätte der Säulestumpf, in dem sich ein mehrgeschossiges Gartenhaus befi ndet, eine Höhe von einhun-dertzwanzig Metern. Doch gerade aus der Inszenierung einer übergroßen klassischen Ordnung als bewohnte Ruine erschließt sich die Bedeutung dieses ungewöhnlichen Bauwerks. Die Garten des Désert de Retz zog nicht allein die Surrealisten um André Breton in ihren Bann, die sich 1960 vor seinem Eingang zu einem Grup-penfoto versammelten. Eine eigentümliche Querverbindung besteht auch zu einem der bekanntesten Entwürfe von Adolf Loos, der 1922 für den Chicago-Tribune-Tower-Wettbewerb einen Wolkenkratzer in Gestalt einer riesigen dorischen Säule einreichte. Wir danken herzlich dem Landschaftsfotografen Michael Kenna, der...
The elevator is today considered a safe and modern means of transportation which even a child can... more The elevator is today considered a safe and modern means of transportation which even a child can operate and which everyone uses as a matter of course. However, the enthusiasm for the vertical movement, for the "earth-bound ascension" still influences the creative works of architects, writers, artists and film-makers. In the 1920s, the literati spoke of the "roaring lift of time" and thus captured in words a new "American" way of life. The fascination with the vertical movement inspired directors to make films which were able to capture the modern view of space in pictures which until then had not been seen. Building planners used the elevator not only to literally build high-rises in the sky, but also, with the use of transparent lifts or panorama elevators, to make it possible to experience architecture in unusual ways. This book attempts to introduce a largely forgotten chapter in the history of technology. It sets out to illustrate the successful h...
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